In 'Signal of Hope,' Sarajevo Utilities Are Restored

By JOHN F. BURNS,

Published: October 23, 1992

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovi na, Oct. 22—
In a step hailed by the United Nations military commander here as "the first signal of hope" for the relief of 400,000 civilians trapped since April, repair crews drawn from both sides in the Sarajevo siege have worked together to restore electrical power to 70 percent of the city and running water to a still wider area.

The repairs, begun three weeks ago, started to bring electricity and water back to the city sporadically and in widely scattered areas last week. But in the last 48 hours, as major transmission lines damaged in the fighting have been repaired, utilities denied to hospitals, private homes and many other places for weeks, and in some cases months, have been restored.

For medical teams in hospitals overcrowded with war wounded, it has meant being able to operate around-the-clock without candles and oil lamps and to use diagnostic equipment that has stood idle for lack of power.

In apartments and houses, families have been relieved of the hours spent each day lining up at water trucks and of nights spent in complete darkness for lack of candles, which have become one of this city's rarest commodities. Shower Is a Luxury

"A hot shower -- what a luxury!" said Arslan Redzepovic, aged 30, one of thousands who has been bathing with cold water from buckets since midsummer. It was then that Serbian nationalist forces surrounding the city began hitting transmission towers and other electrical installations, cutting power to the city and idling pumping stations that supplied most of the city with water.

Efforts by the United Nations military command here to restore electricity to the city began in July, but were thwarted by repeated attacks on repair crews and by new strikes against installations that had been put back into operation.

A new push began in September when command of the United Nations operations passed to Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, a 57-year-old French officer, who told reporters that he intended to prove that the United Nations mission here was not "useless." All Sides to Meet

Until the success in restoring power and water, the United Nations command's main accomplishment had been the opening of Sarajevo airport to a relief airlift that has flown thousands of tons of food and medical supplies to the city. But the airlift has frequently been suspended, as it was on Wednesday after a Canadian military pilot spotted what he thought could be hostile military activity near the airport.

At a news conference today, General Morillon described the restoring of power and water as the first step in a more ambitious plan to relieve the siege.

"This is the first signal of hope that we have been able to provide to anybody here," the general said. "Now we hope to continue, with the same co-operation, to re-establish telephone links, to repair the roads and railways, and to tackle all the work that has to be done to rebuild this city and this country."

General Morillon said he would meet on Friday with officers from all three fighting forces engaged in the Bosnian war -- Serbs, Croats, and the Muslim-led Bosnian Government -- to push for a cease-fire.

United Nations commanders took particular encouragement from the fact that the repairs to power lines were carried out by crews drawn equally from Serbian engineers and workers living outside the siege lines and Muslim counterparts living in Sarajevo. Traveling in separate trucks, but in convoys escorted by armed United Nations troops, the crews visited dozens of sites in the mountains around Sarajevo.

On numerous occasions the crews turned back after being fired on or threatened by local militia commanders, some of them Serbian and some from the Bosnian Government forces defending Sarajevo. When the guarantees of safe passage given by Serbian and Bosnian military commanders were accepted, the crews often worked for hours atop exposed transmission towers, sometimes descending hastily to the ground when snipers opened fire.